sci fi werld view (in response to a paper that Eireen is writing)

Sience Fiction has set me up.

I read Science Fiction. I love the genre. From hard science pulp, to space opera, and back again to soft fantasy, I read them all. Depending on my mood, I will even read horror. I think that I send at least 75% of my free time reading one science fiction novel after another.

Heinlein, Asimov, Card, Anthony, Adams, Modesitt, Gaiman, Butler, Green, Vinge, King, Koontz, Gould, Gibson, Rowling, Pratchet... The list goes on. My bookshelves groan uder their weight. Friends visit and undoubtedly coment on the overabundance of literary snacks that fill my living room. Then they ask if I have "actually read all these". Of course I have. They are my babies, my sweethearts when I am alone, and I have read most of them twice. The Harry Potter series? Six times.

When my family asks me what one should get me as a gift, I am ready with a list of books that I have been waiting to buy for myself. Up and coming authors I haven't read yet. Titles in series that I have been waiting for- for what seems like ever. A new book in the Tinker Series, by Wen Spencer has my heart racing even as I write this.

The "Brave New Worlds" that I encounter daily when my nose is in a book keep me coming back for more, but it seems they have a flaw. No, it's not the stories, they are consistently entertaining. The great flaw of Sci-Fi is the expectation it engenders in me.

Every day, I scan the news. Still no flying cars. As yet, no human on Mars. Today? No universal immunizations. No end to world hunger. No portals to Faerie, or alien visitations (benign or sinister). Just regular life. Day in, day out, wake up, run 2 miles, drive to work, stare at a computer screen, file paperwork, make phone calls, drive home, loaf about, watch movies, read, sleep, repeat. Drive what? A beat up old truck. Paperwork? Yes, we still make paper copies of everything. Phone calls? Just the standard, voice only, and boring. Television and movies are still 2-D. Reading is still done with books, paperbound, no "jacking in" and actually experiencing the stories, no "holodecks" to make my own adventures in. Is there an antigravity chamber in which to rest my weary bones? Alas, as yet, there is not such thing, just a mattress. Does my food come out of a "null entropy chamber"? No, still just the refridgerator.

Yes, technology is advancing at phenominal rates compared to 200 years ago, and many of these fantastic luxuries I yearn for are being developed at this very moment, but the anticipation is a bit heart-dulling. I want it now, hell I wanted it yesterday. Sign me up for the first lunar colony. Test nanobots on my biology. Give me the first set of experimental gills. Let me ride in the trunk of your flying car. Hell, I'd would settle for just one anal probe from an alien with a gruff bedside manner. Science Fiction, come to my rescue